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It’s My Birthday! A Reflection.

May 11, 2024May 10, 2024 by Lisa, posted in Feeling Good, Our Homestead, Wellness

It’s my birthday – I’m 45! (Holy crap!) What better time to reflect than a birthday?

Every morning we start the day with a family walk, but the other morning I was up early and I decided to go walk out to one of the ponds. I went for this peaceful nature walk ALONE. This is a pretty rare event since I usually have at minimum one two-legged or four-legged family member with me. That morning I enjoyed the quiet and the ability to focus in on what was happening around me, without distraction. It was quite early in the morning and the sun and birds were all waking up. Oh the birds! I sat down, enjoyed the scenery and let my mind relax and wander. A thought that crossed my mind was that if I am lucky to live to the age of 90, I am now at my halfway point. Cue the “over the hill jokes” and terrible gag gifts like a cane with a horn on it, haha! That’s pretty foolish stuff, and I think that this idea of halfway is pretty exciting, not some sort of decline. Regardless of if I’m actually at my halfway point or not, there is so much more in life to experience and so much more to learn about and grow and see change and express joy in.

I wanted to write this blog to share a few pieces of wisdom I’ve learned in my first 45. Well, actually most of these conclusions were realized within the last 7 years (although the experiences in the years before are what informed them!). When we moved to White Sky Woods 7 years ago it was like a life reset. A lot of big things happened before these last 7 years that were full of lessons: college, more college, marriage, career, and family, but then we made the intentional shift to a simpler way of life at White Sky Woods and all the adjustments that came along with that life change gave me a wholly new perspective. Maybe you can relate to all or some of these or are recognizing these perspectives in your life now.

Time is limited and I choose how I spend it wisely.
I consciously choose to spend time with people that fill my cup (rather than drain it). I consciously choose to spend time doing activites that fill my cup…but not too much because too many good things can turn into a big bad thing (cup overflow!!). And after many years of just plain doing too much, I now also remember that I only have one cup to fill (because afterall, I am just one person). Gosh, what was I thinking all those years?!

Plan for the unexpected.
I try to never operate with a schedule so full that an unexpected event will be a tipping point to my time, wellness, or sanity. Or put in another way, every day needs to include some flexibility and downtime, lest I lose my mind and nobody wants that.

Regarding downtime – daily meditation is a life changer.
Simply taking 10 minutes every morning to settle into myself and start the day fresh with a routine created the downshift that my busy mind needed. I still get busy mind. Somedays it’s hard to focus on my meditation at all, but I still practice. According to my app I’ve meditated 1,440 days. That’s almost 4 years of keeping up this habit. Through my meditations I develop self-awareness and a connection to others through observation. I find that it increases my intuition which helps me stick to my values and make intentional choices when life hands me options.

Stop giving to everything and everyone else before myself.
This was probably the most radical thing I’ve ever done – listening to my own needs and meeting them first. And when I did this a crazy thing happened – I got better at giving to the other people and other things and when I do it is meaningful and energizing rather than depleting.

Being busy is not a status symbol.
Plain and simple.

Expect joy and I’ll find it.
We cannot control everything that happens in our lives, but we can always control how we respond to it. The way I choose to respond is a reflection of my attitude and a prediction of my experience.

Up to this point, I believe I have been learning to honor myself as a perfectly imperfect being. I still have a long way to go in this, but no matter what length of life I have…I hope to continue to be on a bettering journey – one that makes a difference for me and the people I encounter through my life. If I am lucky enough to have this point be my halflife, I can’t even begin to imagine what will build upon these lessons and what teachings and I experiences I will learn in my next half.

Cheers to many more years of living life to the fullest as is possible in each moment. ♥

The Sun and Moon Wait for No One.

April 24, 2024 by Lisa, posted in Feeling Good, Vacation Rental AirBNB

The biggest draw for us to be living here and doing the homesteading things that we do is our call to nature. When we established White Sky Woods Homestead (moved in 2017, purchased in 2009), we knew we’d be living a more self-sufficent life growing our own food and living with a more flexible schedule. When we were planning our future back in 2009, a big motivator of what land we were looking at was about access to nature. We could have purchased something smaller sized that could perfectly fit the homestead needs of animals and gardens but we also realized we were seeking the ability to access nature on a larger scale. We used to have to drive to places to go for a hike and we wanted to be able to skip the drive so that nature would be right outside our door. When our kids were born and we became a family, we knew we had made the right choice – with White Sky Woods we had a place where they (and us adults too!) can have nature as their playground.

While we have nature at our fingertips here, we still love a road trip – seeking new experiences we can’t have at home. Our first road trip after moving to the homestead was in 2017. Being drawn to the natural experience of seeing an eclipse in totality – we drove to Wyoming to view it. We had never seen an eclipse in totality before (it hadn’t happened in our lifetime in the continental United States) and after seeing the 2017 eclipse in totality we knew we had to make plans for the next chance we could get which would be the 2024 eclipse. If you’ve experienced a solar eclipse in totality, you know that the experience of a false twilight in the middle of the day cannot be beat – seeing a partial is neat but not even closely comparable. In the path of totality you not only see the full eclipse, but you get an experience that can be felt to the bones. Temps drop, light disappears, birds go quiet, night sounds rise up….it’s so incredible and eerie. For anyone, even someone not closely connected to nature, I think the experience can be profound.

A year and a half ago as the solar eclipse hype started I knew I needed to get a trip planned before our options narrowed due to the popularity of traveling to see it. We settled on a trip to Canada and found a cottage on the north side of Lake Erie, facing south with an open view and in the path of totality. The only thing we had to do was get there and have good weather. Guaranteed good weather…..well, that’s a crapshoot, especially in springtime! We prepared ourselves that we may not see the eclipse. We spent a week in Ottawa to make the trip about more than just the eclipse immersing ourselves in all things Canadian (what a great time we had in that parlimentary city!) and then we headed to the Niagara Peninsula (of Canada) for the eclipse. While there was nothing flexible about the eclipse itself (it was universally determined – date, time, location), our experience with it was going to depend on a lot of factors including how the weather shaped up. The forecast kept changing: terrible, great, something in-between. We knew we had to remain flexible and make the best of whatever nature offered up to us.

Well, we got something in-between which added both suspense and awe to our total eclipse experience. We saw the eclipse and it was completely different from 2017, but equally as awe-inspiring!

In August of 2017 – Clear skies, Wyoming (USA) wilderness, heard the birds go quiet, temp dropped significantly, totality of just over 2 minutes, went pitchblack and the stars came out.

In April of 2024 – Mostly cloudy skies, Niagara Peninsula/Lake Erie (Canada), didn’t notice the birds due to Lake Erie sounds, temp dropped but not significantly, totality close to 4 minutes, didn’t go completely dark rather looked like a “sunset” over the vastness of Lake Erie, no stars due to clouds.

Another difference between the two was how our kids experienced it. They were with us during the 2017 eclipse but they don’t remember the event because they were too young. Watching them experience it this year made my soul smile. They thought it was awesome! When it went dark – their response was so honest and full of wonder. Later Woodland said that he would describe the experience as “incrazing”….which he says is a mash up of incredible and amazing. I thought so too kiddo!

Our entire experience of the eclipse in 2024 was a great reminder that while having a plan is great, we need to remain flexible and make the best of whatever comes. There is nothing we can do about the weather so allowing it to control our mood or ruin our plans is pointless. This experience with flexibility is useful in so many aspects of life.

Now, heavy traffic not controlling my mood……talk to me about that another time, ha! I shouldn’t complain though, the only trouble we had was going through Toronto and it was barely any delay on the trip.

Usually we’d have our seeds started indoors by late March and our spring sowing started in the high tunnel by mid-March. Since the eclipse planned it’s visit on April 8th, we got a late start on planting and starting seeds, but everything seems to be coming along well.

I find nature to be awe-inspiring. From a small mason bee to the total eclipse. A blue-flag iris growing in the ditch to an Aurora filling the sky with color and movement. I like to connect to all of it and remember that I’m a wee little part of this incredible universe. What part(s) of nature do you connect to most? Rocks/minerals? Plants? Animals? Sky? Water? Or…..?

-L

P.S. Seeking a summer or fall season connection with nature? As of publishing this post we have just a few more weeks of 2024 availability at the Cabin at White Sky Woods – 2 weeks in May, 1 week in June and 1 week in September, along with a few days in October. Week long stays (7 nights) receive a 10% discount! Otherwise, there is a 3-night minimum. We hope to host you!

Get in the Gap

December 20, 2023 by Lisa, posted in Feeling Good, Our Homestead, Wellness

Well, just like that another year has just about breezed by. Winter Solstice is right around the corner and thank goodness – I’m already begging for more daylight! It’s a very busy time of year for many people, but for our family winter signifies rest. In winter we spend the majority of our time with our most valued things – without the distraction of a busy schedule! For us that is family, friends, education, and wellness. We participate in these things all year, but there are more things going on in summer that pull us all different directions and sometimes we can find ourselves a bit too full and distracted away from what matters. Thanks to a tradition we created 3 years ago, we’re rolling into this winter feeling well, relaxed, and open to that which really matters.

Have you heard of high school students who graduate and take a gap year before starting college? A gap year gives these young people time to rest, rejuvenate, focus on health and wellness and oftentimes traveling and experiencing new opportunities is part of this. It’s about growth and positive change to prepare for the next phase of life.

I love this idea of a gap year. How about a gap month? Or even a gap week? A few years I discovered how I could implement a sort of gap into my own life, for our whole family. An area I needed the gap the most was at the end of growing season. Growing season is hectic for any homesteader. The growing, the weeding, the harvesting, the putting up of food, the cleaning up of the garden and in the meantime, other summer projects and projects we need to complete each year before winter. In the far north here we have less season to do things in good weather, such as preparing the woodpile for winter and any other outdoor projects. Any extra days at the end of the growing season that we can work outside, we will. It often feels a like a race to wrap everything up for winter and it happens after our busy season when we are most tired. It used to be stressful, but we’re finding ways to minimize the load so that we aren’t in an end of season frenzy (which in the first years was mostly due to being new at homesteading and also making choices that left us having more responsibility than we could balance in our schedules).

It’s especially hard to turn the busy off when you work where you live and you can find work and projects everywhere you look. There isn’t a switch to turn off busy. Or is there? Several years ago we planned a week long getaway not too far from home to take place after growing season. I clearly remember feeling stressed about the deadline for the work to be done. But really, the work is never done on a homestead, so choices need to be made – insert the gap. We left the homestead, took a week away, and when we came back it was like having a complete reset. Removing ourselves from the homestead for a brief time was enough to distract from that “work is never over and therefore I will overwork” unhealthy mindset and behavior. We had time to decompress, experience new things, and be a little out of our element – and wouldn’t you know, it was invigorating and liberating! We came back reset and ready to work, but also approaching homestead life in a new slower going perspective. We fed our souls in this gap. Homesteading does this for us too, but like anything, too much of a good thing can turn unpleasant because it becomes too much.

After that first trip, it was very obvious to me that I needed to build in a gap. The gap helped me reset so that I could find balance and so that I could honor myself, my family, and the rest we need to thrive. And not just the reset from that one week, but enough of a reset that due to the first gap go around I began to learn the importance of rest during all seasons.

My end of growing season gap now extends beyond a week. With purposeful choices I spent nearly a month reseting. Seeing friends, going new places, finding more time for books and making a nest for myself on the couch. I’m learning that I do best when I dabble in microgaps every day – no matter the season. I’m on my third year of end of gardening season gap and it had been so impactful in my choices in how to experience life that at the end of gardening season I’m not feeling chaotic, stressed, and overwhelmed (don’t get me wrong, this isn’t fully eliminated, some is always inevitable). I prepare for the gap feeling excited for the upcoming time (rather than stressed out about being prepared for it). It’s a little dangling carrot that I look forward to and it brings me joy thinking about it (and even more joy being in the gap).

Gap recommendations: hike a new local place each day, clear out your book stash and deliver them to little free libraries near you (permission to grab a few good books if you see them), take a vacation – it doesn’t need to be far!, meet up with a friend you haven’t seen in a while, spend a week preparing new, unique foods from different cultures, pick a topic to learn something new about and create a cozy space to do your learning. Remember – the gap isn’t about making a project out of something (we don’t need more projects!), it’s about FEEDING YOUR SOUL and giving yourself a RESET.

This year’s gap for me included a visit to new places, reading “breezy” books (you know, the kind that don’t make you think too hard), playing games at the kitchen table with my family, taking longer walks for health, and meeting up with friends I haven’t seen in a while. My heart feels full and my soul rested. I am a better version of myself because of it. A few highlights in the photos below. You’ll see that for me my gap is very nature oriented (Vitamin N – Nature, provides its own dose of soul wellness!).

Is there a time of year you need a gap? What drives your need to have a reset (and could you make any small changes to ease up on this)? What will you do you in your gap (message me, I’d love to hear!)? A gap doesn’t need to be extreme (does anything?!), it just needs to be time doing something different and something that brings joy.

Solstice is just a few days away meaning the longest night is just ahead of us – the darkness in this season is a reminder that there is always light ahead.

Season’s Greetings,

-L

Surrender Your Agenda

July 26, 2023July 26, 2023 by Lisa, posted in Feeling Good, Our Homestead, Wellness

Have you seen a young tree growing amongst a dense area of trees? It has a long thin trunk and sparse branches. It needs light to survive so it’s doing absolutely everything it can to get upward to the light, giving very little energy to trunk girth or expansive branches that produce leaves for photosynthesis.

A tree inherently knows its greatest potential is when it can reach the open canopy in the sun, giving it access to the food and energy it needs to survive. But in a dense growing space, what it takes to get there results in it being scrawny and susceptible. It gave up everything for that light, most importantly the thick, strong and sturdy trunk.

If you see a young tree starting out like this and you clear away the older neighboring trees, you’ve now given this tree an opportunity to grow to its fullest potential. Instead of sending all its growth energy upward, it will put effort into a thicker, more stable truck. It will branch out into its TRUE form. I will likely live longer and it will FLOURISH in the time that it is alive.

If you’ve been a reader for a while, you know I’m head over heels for symbolism and specifically, I am enamored with nature and what it has to teach me. Living at White Sky Woods Homestead and immersing myself into the garden and wild spaces has raised my personal intuition and gifted me a lot of personal growth. (Read my past ramblings about learning from nature here).

Over the past years I’ve been learning about letting go to grow. This year I turned it into a mantra – give space and give grace. Through life I was conditioned to believe that the more I did (to prove something, to make money, to be successful, to be engaged, to get an A, and on and on) the more I would grow. We made the intentional move to White Sky Woods to jump off the hamster wheel and live a more simple life focusing on family, community, and supporting ourselves through growing our own food and reducing stress through debt-free living. Well, we did that, but there was still one hitch for me. That darn conditioning that told me that success looked a certain way and that in order to grow I had to have an agenda and push it. And, before I knew it I was jumping back into the hamster wheel. It looked different than the one before. Instead of the hamster wheel being my career, my education, my extracurriculars, my goals, my <fill in the blank> it became an unending list of excessive planting, harvesting, and food production, heavily scheduled activities for the kids, tackling every project that needed doing in a unnecessarily limited period of time, going places, doing things for other people, and more <fill in the blank>. I hopped right back in that hamster wheel…and it was a squeaky one!

It. Was. Detrimental.

Something had to change. I didn’t lay out a plan or set any crazy agenda to it. In fact, I did the opposite. I surrendered the agenda. I trusted myself. I knew that in a lifetime of building my dependable character I would not “fail” myself. I already had the proof I needed. Like that aforementioned tree in the forest seeking light, I thought I was growing, seeking exacty what I needed. But these behaviors left me in a less than ideal state of wellness. It was time to clear the trees around me. It was time to surrender my agenda. Not to make a plan to surrender my agenda, rather just surrender. Let go. Trust myself.

When we surrender the agenda and trust ourselves, it is actually an act of allowing. Allowing ourselves permission to be and to flow. All this control we assert into our lives (via lists, impossible personal expectations, over scheduling) impedes our true nature. When we surrender our agenda, we now leave an opening to see what comes into view. When I surrendered my agenda I was fearful I would be lazy and not get the things I needed to done – but somehow everything I needed to do still happened. And it got done without anxiety, stress, and negative feelings. Surprisingly, even more got done! I found myself finding more time for creative expression, meaningful conversations with friends and family (because I could actually be present rather than agenda focused), and filling in space with things that feed my soul, which in turn gave me the fuel to live a full life – but full in a non-agenda way. There is no list to cross things off of.

I am becoming the tree in its true form (I don’t use the word “became” because I believe it’s an ongoing journey). I have cleared the space to create the most abundant life, and that creation took very little effort from me because once the space was cleared, I started growing just the way I should in my environment, just like the tree. What a liberating feeling to release my own contrived (well-intentioned but detrimental) agenda from my life. To release the agenda I thought was benefiting me, but what was actually holding me back. To just allow.

For all you perfectionist, goal-setting, driven to succeed people out there that think this blog is silly-business….I am one of you (still!). Letting go is possible. It doesn’t need a plan or a chart or anything…..those are completely counterintuitive to surrendering the agenda. If there was a step-by-step process to this, I am definitely the type of person who would have written it down because I love process (nerd). But I believe there is only one step to this – GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION. It all opens up from there, in the way it is meant to be and on the timeline it should. Assert nothing. Be Patient. Observe. Allow.

If you clear space, how will you (the tree) flourish? What’s just one thing you think may come your way when you surrender your agenda? Creativity? Forgiveness? Contemplation? Progress? Rest? I would love to hear! If you have cleared space – what happened? Tell me!

-L

P.S. Several years back a friend shared this poem with me – She Let Go, by Safire Rose. I read and listened to the poem many times and it began to take new meaning overtime. First, seeming completely unattainable – or even false and impossible. Now, it is fully relateable. It is a great partner to my blog post here, I encourage you to check it out!

Junk, Piles, and a Tar Bucket Filled with Wasps

July 8, 2023 by Lisa, posted in Our Homestead

Old homesteads have junk. Here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and I imagine most other places too. It’s just a fact that comes with places that existed before routine garbage pick up and/or living rural. 80+ year old car frame? We have that! Barbed wire in the most unsuspecting places. Got that too. Piles of empty wine bottles stashed in the woods? Of course we have that. (It’s rumored a very long ago former resident was quite the wino.) Some cool things too, like old horse drawn farming implements of all kinds (and even many of the same kind). When you purchase an old homestead, most likely you also purchased a lot of junk. The next step after purchase should be getting a tetanus shot.

Slowly we’ve been doing clean up here and there, but there has been a lingering project. The Shed. We originally planned to raze the collapsed structure prior to opening the vacation rental cabin, but time didn’t allow. We cleaned up around it an went on our merry way. But it remained on the list of things to do. We needed to wait until good weather and when we had enough time at the cabin with no guests so we could work in that area without impacting someone’s restful stay. Also, in honesty, we also experienced some procrastination due to project dread.

Well, the opportunity presented itself. We had a guest cancellation and we decided to block off the calendar to just get it done. Of course it happened to be 4th of July extended weekend and it happened to be really hot.

I’m not going to sugar coat it, The Shed project sucked. Hot weather, sweltering sun with no shade, battling allergies, mosquitoes, black flies (OMG the black flies!!), sweat in the eyes, moving metal, garbage, wood and avoiding endless rusty nails – it was pretty much the worst project we have ever done. Even mentally it was challenging because I couldn’t help but thinking about how I ended up responsible for cleaning up someone else’s junk. It’s like always getting stuck doing your co-workers dishes in the kitchen at the office, x10,000. We found some interesting things in the shed but since the shed’s roof collapsed at least 20 years ago, we mostly found rusty useless things. And, a bucket of tar with a lot of live yellow jackets inside.

But, while it was a multi day, physically and mentally challenging project, I’m so proud of our family. We did it together and we all did it to the best of our abilities. And, the upside of the whole project…it’s done!

All said and done we hauled out over 2 TONS of garbage! Several trailer loads of scrap and several trailer loads of garbage. While working on the project, it really had me thinking about our own footprint on the land. Are we holding onto things that will be someone else’s problem in the future? Or maybe more proactively, do we have things we don’t need or don’t use and could do without in the first place? Also, clean up your own mess so someone else doesn’t have to!!! (Apologies…having a Mom Moment here.)

Here’s our before and after photos.

BEFORE. Note aspen tree growing up through the center, about to be set free.

….and AFTER! We will be collecting wildflower seeds through summer to spread here, but in the meantime we cut down brambles that were growing next to the shed and we spread them over the exposed ground to cover it.

Here’s a little photo gallery:

Even with all the efforts of The Shed project, The Fourth of July weekend wasn’t all work. We had an amazing community event on the 4th, our annual parade (it was actually 2 minutes long this year!…that’s double last year) and our social gathering and potluck. What a gem of a community we live in. Small, welcoming and wonderful…much unlike The Shed (ha!).

-L

Foraging Adventure for Beginners

June 3, 2023June 4, 2023 by Lisa, posted in Keweenaw, Our Homestead

I’m dropping a quick blog here to share about an event I’m hosting this July! Since 2019 I’ve been offering private foraging tours at White Sky Woods Homestead. I even had the opportunity to be highlighted on the show 906 Outdoors! I have met great people along the way and seen the spark that lights up in their eyes when they learn about and are able to identify local plants that we explore during the tours. I’ve added an element – sketching – to create a new workshop called Foraging Adventure for Beginners.

As a teacher and leaning heavily on visual learning myself, I have learned that reading about plants is one way to expand my knowledge, but when I read, seek out the plant, and then draw my observations, the sketching acts as a seal to my knowledge! Am I a drawing artist? Nope. Do I have any special experience sketching? Nah. Is sketching creative, fun, and helpful to the learning process? YES!

I absolutely love foraging so I’ve designed, written and published “Foraging Adventures Journal and Guide” for beginners who want to learn about foraging (with a focus on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan). All participants will receive this book and start using it during the workshop. Leave your worries behind because absolutely NO artisic experience is needed to participate or create your own plant sketches – we’ll talk about tips for sketching and practice while out in the field.

Do you see any plants to forage in this photo?
After the workshop you’ll easily be able to identify them!

During this workshop experience participants will:

learn about foraging ethics and safety
learn how to accurately recognize 15 (or more) of the most common plants to forage around the Keweenaw and Upper Peninsula and what their uses are
use the art of sketching to get to know the plants they forage
forage their own plants to take home to make their own herbal tea
receive “Foraging Adventures – Journal and Guide” booklet

The tour will end with herbal tea time, light snacks and group discussion.

Pre-registration is required and a limited number spots will be available. This limited number allows us to have a small group for maximized individual experience. The cost is $65 per participant. The workshop is being offered one time this year – July 15, 2023.

Click Here For Details and REgistration

P.S. If you live out of the local area, I have two nights (7/15 & 7/16) available to rent at our vacation rental cabin, which is right here at White Sky Woods. I’ve blocked off the dates (they will look to be unavailable on our booking calendar), so contact me directly for assitance in making the booking through the platform.

Long Winter: Finding a Spark While Working Outdoors

March 5, 2023 by Lisa, posted in Feeling Good, Our Homestead

It’s been a while since I’ve written. Before homesteading, in my career part of my role was creating and directing digital content plans for clients. But, for my own blog I vowed I would only write when the feeling and idea grabbed me. Yeah, I know, if I published more content I could improve my website SEO, blah blah blah. But that’s not what life is about for me anymore. I’m a-okay with a quality over quantity approach (doesn’t this apply to so many things?!). Plus, writing is often a means of me generating ideas and understanding myself. I’m glad to have people who happen to be reading during this process – so, I’m very grateful for YOU.

Let’s just get honest about why I haven’t written for months – this winter has been hard. Not the physical hard (especially since it has been a more mild snow total this winter), but the crummy winter mental wellness kind of hard. It makes me a bit uncomfortable writing that here, but I know by sharing this I’m doing a little part in stopping the stigma of talking about mental health. I wouldn’t try to hide a broken arm, so why should I try to hide the fact that this winter seasonal depression really grabbed ahold of me? Especially since I know when I talk about it, many people share that they have experienced the same. Being a homesteader, we definitely see winter as a time for rest, which is essential. This winter I rested a lot, which actually supported the healing my physical body needed (woot!). But, there were some added pressures in the home starting this January, and by early February I could feel that my mind was just not functioning wholly.

Here on the Keweenaw our winter solstice (shortest daylight time of the year) is approximately 8 1/2 hours of daylight. Compare that to our summer solstice with 16 hours of daylight…yup, winter is long and dark and drastically different than our summer. Being aware of this I have been doing everything I usually do to help with our extra long winters here: Vitamin D supplements, continued daily meditation, daily indoor and outdoor exercise, drinking lot of water, long vacation in sunny places, short getaways with friends, and using my special “happy lamp” during the dark mornings. It is a fairly comprehensive list, so why have I been feeling the effects of seasonal depression more this winter? I have no idea. The good news is I have slowly been sensing it escaping me as the days get longer, but it’s still here, just presenting in a more mild way. I’m glad to be out of the days where I could just sleep forever, or when I couldn’t even find the focus to read a good book, watch a program or scroll a feed. If you’ve made acquaintances with depression, you know, depression typically isn’t just a feeling, it affects how you function to the core of your being.

Today though, with the late winter temps warming, we had a winter project that still needed to be done – clearing trees that have fallen into our ponds. From this winter and the past few years, trees at the edge of the pond have taken the tumble. Getting out on the water to remove them is only possible when the pond is frozen. This is our first winter with our Taiga Dog machine, which is an all-season utility machine for us. In winter Tim uses it for grooming our private 3-mile trail system for family and our vacation rental guests, and for times like this when we need to haul heavy materials (such as chainsaw, timber, etc.) back and forth around White Sky Woods. We have 240 acres so this machine is a great asset to us!

This is a photo of a Taiga Dog machine parked in the center of a large open snowy area. — Taiga Dog parked on the center of the Amikwag Pond.

If you are familiar with this machine, the operator stands behind the machine in the sled. The materials being hauled (including me today), ride in the additional sled. It goes over deep snow and can be used in all seasons on all types of terrain. We haven’t had it for quite a year, but it has been so handy! Check out this short video to see.

For the project we had two ponds to visit, one with light work and the other with heavier work. Tim took care of the first downed tree on his own. It was a tall, skinny, lightweight fir tree. It just needed to be cut up and pulled aside to be off the pond and out of view from our favorite sunset spot. The animals will have a chance to finish browsing it and then it will eventually turn back to the land. Then, we headed back to the second pond. This was going to be a bigger project. The tree has been downed for several years and was a very tall and wide cedar. Tim chain-sawed, I hauled branches and large pieces of the trunk off the frozen pond onto land, stacking what we can use to split for kindling (cedar is so good at this) and the rest was laid aside to eventually decompose back to the land.

Short of shoveling, snowblowing, and hauling wood into the yurt, my outside work this winter has been limited. As we were working, I felt my senses light up. Stewarding the land is a big part of our homestead experience, and it was so very nice to be doing just that and best, as a team. The sun was shining, the temp was rising into the 30’s and when the chainsaw wasn’t running, it was completely soundless except for a few chickadees (whose song seems to be switching to “Hey Sweetie” – spring must be near!).

While I am normally out on the trails for a snowshoe, having a specific purpose to today’s outdoor time sparked me. I work outdoors all summer long and then in winter my projects generally turn to inside work. Working in the woods, in the snow, and by the water – it just lit me up inside. Also, this particular location at White Sky Woods feels to me to be a space for healing. The land is recovering here, where it was quarried for sandstone 120 years ago. Today, I feel I “recovered” a touch more. I just needed that internal flame for purpose in the outdoors to be fanned.

The project even provided me with a limb shaped like my initial – “L”. Hadn’t seen that before!

What’s left for this winter and in the upcoming winters, this will need to be a coping method I add to my “go happily through the long winter” list.

What are some things you do to help stay well in the winter months? Please share, I would love to hear from you.

Wishing you peace, love and nature,

-L

Because this post includes the topic of mental wellness, I feel compelled to share this resource. If you don’t know who to talk to and are having a mental health crisis, dial 988 or visit Suicide and Crisis Hotline. Your life matters. ❤️

Less is ahead of us (and it’s a good thing).

November 8, 2022 by Lisa, posted in Feeling Good, Minimalism, Our Homestead

This last summer we celebrated our 5th anniversary here at the homestead. Time is such an unusual thing. 5 years sounds like almost nothing in the span of life, yet, for me it feels like I’ve been here for the bulk of my life. I’ve tried to dissect this strange phenomenon, and the best description I can come up with is that our lives are a bunch of chapters that make up a book. Each chapter is significant to the story, but the current chapter is the one I’m most invested in because it leads to what’s next….and therefore it feels like it is the most relevant. I’m not the type of person who looks back to the past wishing for the “best years” back. I mostly find my focus on the here and now, but I can also get wrapped up into what comes next because I love a good plan, ha! And without a plan, we probably wouldn’t be here celebrating 5 years at White Sky Woods.

If you’re new to our story, the quick-ish background goes like this. Almost 14 years ago Tim and I purchased 80 acres on the Keweenaw Peninsula. We had a dream of having a place we could call home, a place where we could live differently than the typical path expected of people in their late 20’s (which we were at the time). We didn’t know exactly what that looked like, but even being fairly new to career life, we knew we didn’t want to spend the next 40 years participating in a rat race of earning, spending, keeping up, and being stressed out during it all. We weren’t depressed, or lacking, or having a bad time by any means, we just knew something different was meant for us – something outside the box.

Through the course of the next years, we had 2 kids, significant job role changes, and purchased our beloved White Sky Woods Homestead. For several years we traveled here, turning our raw land into a homestead, building everything ourselves and keeping an eye on the future use of it and how we’d move someday. Eventually we made that move in 2017! We have been living with the land, homesteading, homeschooling, getting involved in our community and and starting a business for ourselves with our produce sales and year-round cozy cabin rental for people who just want to get away from it all and soak up the peace of nature we came here for.

That’s the short story. As you can imagine, it was a lot of doing.all.the.things over this period of time. Most of it was the doing of building the infrastructure we need to sustain a successful homestead – such as building the high tunnel, renovating the cabin, fences, fences, more fences. And then recognizing better things/systems – so moving, changing, and building better options. Also, maintaining the general work with gardening, putting up food, keeping up with our trail system, and the process of making our own wood. Add in family, community involvement and part-time employment at home. This all, however, is an amount of forward drive and doing that cannot be sustained. We came here to provide for ourselves, but, we also came here to direct our own lives, relish in our beautiful space, and be connected as a family who isn’t at the mercy of extreme scheduling and overwork.

Now, we have in place what we know we need and can sustain. There are no major projects lingering ahead of us – what a relief!! After having been in the process of building up the homestead, growing infrastructure and adjusting our systems since 2009, it’s time to settle in to what is. Excluding when we decided to take action on this “dream” back in 2009, I have never had such a clear feeling about what’s next. That feeling is what the title of this blog is: LESS.

What does LESS look like? I’m not sure, but I do know it will take some learning! Being a driven and perfectionist personality doesn’t make LESS easy, but if I can do more well, I know I have the ability to do the same with LESS. 🙂 LESS may not even look as such from the outsiders perspective, as we’ll still be over here managing the homestead and business. These are definitely work, but they are fulfilling and rewarding work. What will be missing is the cramming in the big projects in every moment of downtime. And, there are some ways we are improving systems for the regular work, including the plan to put a small portion of the outdoor garden into a green manure crop this year, instead of growing the entire space. It also means continuing with a manageable flock size and not raising any new animals. I see this new space of LESS that will be available as being our place of rest, where we use it as just that or use it as an opening for creativity learning and fun. I guess that’s where the term “less is more” comes from. When we create new space for flexibility, more of what we love will flow on in. Having this bit of extra space gives more fluidity and empowers us to make smart choices on how to use this time. Less will of course lead to more, but it will be the things that fill us up rather than wear us down.

What I have learned in the last two years is that I need a forced break to make the shift to LESS in my life. November in the Keweenaw has arrived, which is as forced of a break as any! The garden is done for the year. The woodpile is stocked. We have a great routine with homeschool. My faculty semester is over. The scene is set for LESS. Just at the very start of it I’ve had more time for creativity, friends, wanderings, and even writing this blog. 🙂

Not all people are interested in this kind of less I just described. And having less can carry such a negative connotation. But less can be good in the many aspects of our lives. Less stuff. Less people-pleasing. Less negative thoughts. Less judgement. Less busyness.

Is there something you want less of? If you remove it from your life, what kinds of more will be let in?

Sometimes we need to put more in (personal growth, income earning, etc.) to get us to less. But in my experience, with a vision and a plan for it, we can get where we need to be. While we all have different paths in life, my wish is that we all give ourselves grace on that path of finding what is meant for us, and that the focus isn’t always on having the more that leads to burnout.

A thing I will definitely take more of? Watching sunsets.

Agate Beach, November 2022 – Keweenaw Peninsula

Growth When You Least Expect It.

June 21, 2022 by Lisa, posted in Feeling Good, Our Homestead

I started and didn’t finish this blog post 100+ times, seriously, no exaggeration. First, a few years ago, it started in my mind. I had been inspired by some observations that I had many in nature of triumph, persistence, and healing. The idea I had in my mind grew. And then life went on and the idea stopped growing, in fact, I barely even noticed it. Later, the idea came back to me, I worked through it in my mind an awful lot, especially while I worked in the garden. In my mind I wrote and rewrote my thoughts. Eventually, I started writing them down, but then the idea grew so big it wasn’t manageable with my writing skill set (or, I just couldn’t get it there, it was daunting), so I just took a step back. But, it nagged and nagged in my mind, I needed to find another way to nurture the idea but I didn’t know how. Then yesterday, while observing my lovely plants growing in our high tunnel, I found my inspiration, my focus – my thoughts came full circle and I understood the lesson I’ve been wanting to share.

I find my busy mind slowing and looking inward much more than it used to when I was younger. This happens a lot when I’m gardening because gardening has a mind clearning effect on me. I just get in a zone (ohhh, it’s such a sweet and savory place). With a major life change in completing the move to White Sky Woods (it was 5 years ago!) and bringing a dream to fruition, it encouraged a lot of personal growth. The change fueled it, and also, a new lifestyle encouraged it through time availability (although I’ve had some up’s and down in this department), lack of outside pressure, new pace, new self-care habits and nutritious food and healthy movement. I have learned that personal growth cannot be forced – that we grow more or less in each season of our lives, much like nature. I found that at times in my past, I really tried to force growth. Sometimes I felt I needed some specific growth and then I was fraught with challenge. When I was feeling challenged, stuck, and confused that awful, ugly, stinky voice in my head would start talking. It said stupid things, and sometimes it was so persuasive I listened, what?! (The brains neuropathways can be so powerful! These super highways can transport negative thinking based on our lifetime of experiences and thoughts, but the great news is we can make new ones, create new routes that transport positive thoughts, and that’s where change and postive growth takes place! I digress within this extra long parentheses.) When I listened to that bully voice, it halted any growth and I intentionally stop listening in order to recalibrate. It could be best described by “getting in the way of myself.” I’ve had a lot of growth, but sometimes I still get in my own damn way. Albeit frustrating, I know now to give myself some grace and compassion when this happens, even when it feels unnatural.

Back to the garden, this year it feels like it is growing very slowly. Each year is different, so you’d think I’d be able to manage my thinking, worries, etc. by now right? But, it’s still a thing for me, and it comes out of my dedication to homesteading, healthy food for us and the community, so much more, and probably a unwelcome dose of perfectionism. I could get lost in this worry about the speed of my garden growing. I could look ahead, project, or panic plant (yeah, sometimes I do this…if I don’t see growth I just keep seeding more and more, it’s a little…..much, but also sometimes useful like when you grasshopper population decimates you entire spring crop – yea, that happened last year, ugh). Or, I could take a deep breath, have confidence in my skills of planting a garden, be sure to listen to my intuition and then respond, or check again in a few days. Growth cannot be forced.

To remind me of this – there is this bit of magic currently happening in the high tunnel. Each year we amend the planting beds by turning compost into the soil. It does a great job adding nutrition the plants will need during their life. About a month ago, I noticed a few sunflower plants growing among my veggies. Well, I legitamtely am incapable of pulling sunflowers like you would with weeds. I just can’t. Plus, these sunflower seeds were growing from two year old compost, meaning they managed to survive a long term decomposition and heat cycle. So, even though growing sunflowers in the high tunnel is unconventional, I wanted them to stay. And they grew. And grew. And grew!

Tall sunflowers, reaching for the sky….errr…..ceiling.

One is growing nearly in our path which is deeply compacted soil from getting walked on. The conditions for it are not right. Today I saw that the first blossom is about to happen. And just like that, all the thoughts I’d been having about that original blog post came to me, which I immediately understood had to be part of the process of learning the lesson I was getting after, for my OWN growth. Growing plants don’t question. They don’t analyze. Growing plants don’t force. They don’t wonder if the conditions are right, or they are growing directly where they want to be or think they should be. Growing plants have the ability to overcome the odds, and they slow down or give space for others when they can’t grow and when the conditions are right, they grow again.

It’s. Freaking. Magical!

And, I have found my own life mimics exactly what the sunflowers showed me. When I’m ready for growth, it happens. It happens unplanned and unexpectedly. Sometimes it happens after a challenge, or when I least expect it. The process isn’t always beautiful, but the end product is! And, I had absolutely everything I needed within me (plus a little bit a “fertilizer” from self-care behaviors, and a great network of love and support). And then much like that sunflower has, the seeds for the next growth are there, but they are unrealized until the time is right again. I can trust that it is all there.

Do you give yourself room to grow?
Do you honor growth you didn’t call-in or expect?
Can you find the beauty in your growth AND non-growth phases, and see the beauty in who you authentically are?
I bet the people who love you see it. ❤

Plus….who doesn’t love a sunflower? They stand out in the garden with a happy, soul shining look. Why not let your soul shine too?

Getting ready to shine! And it doesn’t need to be perfect – note dead insect. 😉

Wishing you peace, love and nature,

-L

P.S. HAPPY SUMMER SOLSTICE!

Travel Bug Infects Homesteading Family

March 8, 2022 by Lisa, posted in Feeling Good, Our Homestead

When we started our homesteading life, flexibility was a huge perk we were looking forward to. However, the last few years we had less flexibility since our mission was starting our homestead up from scratch. Our infrastructure and systems are in place now (for the most part) and we knew it was time to do the next thing in the master plan, travel more! While we can’t travel in spring, summer or fall due to our commitments of growing our own food on the homestead, we knew it was time to start utilizing the flexibility we have in winter to travel. I love traveling, seeing new things, experiencing new cultures and expanding my mind through experiences. As a homeschooling family, I also saw the opportunity for the kids to learn on the road, through experiences, rather than at the kitchen table in a book. Several months ago I start planning a winter trip, the timing worked well, having it take place just before we start our seeds indoor (always planning ahead!). A few winters ago Woodland said he wanted to see the desert, so that was our destination! It was quite the road trip! Some things I tallied from our travels:

16 days
2 adults, 2 kids, 1 dog
84 word search puzzles
7 audiobooks
5,000 miles driven, approximately
7 meals out
41 meals packed/prepared (this is no easy feat while traveling with family!)
1 epic hot air balloon ride
10 states
8 National Park properties
4 lizards, 10+ new to us birds
3 AirBNB’s
4 overnights in hotels
0 sightings of Michigan License Plates (c’mon MI, represent!)
Countless new things learned and opportunities had!

We learned so much along the way, and we even learned about homesteading – gathering knowledge about indigenous farming through the last thousands of years in the desert and ranch life from the 1800’s.

Here are some photo highlights from our travels:

On our travels we saw expansive open spaces, tall and seemingly never-ending mountains, and captured knowledge about millions of years of history. While daily life can feel big and overwhelming, through our observations I recognized how small we are in the entire scope of things. It makes daily challenges seem much more manageable, as we are just a speck in the expanse and history of time.

Yet, while we were out and about, so many things remind me of home. Yup, even in the desert! Common plant families – like mallow, hiking over sandstone and basalt rocks – such as those of the Keweenaw, copper mining – albeit a very different style than the Keweenaw region; so much of what we experienced ended with “hey, that’s similar to at home!”. While it was great to be out and about, expanding our minds and having new experiences, arriving home was a welcome part of our trip. Our homestead is where we feel the strongest sense of belonging. Man is it good to have a place to belong.

P.S. There was a lot more snow when we got home! We are so grateful for our neighbors who took care of our animals and homestead while we were adventuring. We have an amazing community who looks after each other.

Wishing you peace, love and time in nature,

-L